5 Exit Strategies for Financial Advisors

When it comes to planning their retirement, many financial advisors choose to sell their business and turn their book of clients over to another advisor. Within this scenario, there are numerous exit strategies you can use in order to end your involvement with your clients and start enjoying your retirement years. We’re going to look at five of those options.

5 Ways to Start Your Retirement

Sell your business outright.

Selling your business outright can be a quick and easy way to end your involvement and start your retirement. However, this is an option that most financial advisors aren’t likely to take. First of all, it can be jarring to suddenly end your involvement with clients whom you’ve built a solid relationship with over the years. Secondly, most financial advisors don’t do well going from running a successful business to suddenly being retired overnight.

Sell part of your client book.

You can gently transition into retirement by simply tapering back on your client load. You might choose to sell part or most of your client book to a new financial advisor while retaining a smaller, more select list of clients for yourself. This can help you continue to bring in an income during your retirement and help make the transition an easier one. However, it’s not really retiring in the true sense of the word, and you might find that retaining some clients prohibits you from doing some of the things you want to do in your retirement years.

Sell to a member of your team.

Whether you have an up and coming employee or you hire someone with a goal of selling them the business, this is an option that many financial advisors would love to be able to use. The downside is that there aren’t a lot of qualified financial advisors currently in the market, so you might have trouble finding someone who is qualified and capable enough to take over. If you do, it’s a great way to transition clients to a new advisor who they may already be familiar with due to their presence in your office.

Sell it…and stick around.

Selling your business doesn’t mean you have to leave. Some financial advisors choose to sell their business and then remain as part of the company, serving as a mentor and advisor to the new owners. They may even continue to work with some of their old clients. This can help make the transition easier for both clients and new financial advisors, but it’s difficult to know when to say when and let the new owners handle it themselves.

Sell it to a company experienced in succession planning.

More financial advisors are seeing the wisdom of having a set succession plan in place for their retirement. One of the ways they are implementing a plan is by working with a company that has experience handling financial advisor retirement. This allows them to sell their business and then phase out their involvement over a longer period of time, making the transition easy on them, their clients, and the new financial advisor handling their book.

No two financial advisors are the same, and no two retirements are going to be the same, either. What works for your retirement might not work for someone else. We can help you find the plan that’s right for you. Contact advisorRETIRE™ today for more information.